You hear a lot about why marketers and sales people should create buyer persons but what exactly are they?

Essentially a buyer persona is a fact-based avatar of the different buyer types that would be interested in your products or services.  Using market research and data on existing customers (such as demographics, goals and purchasing patterns), organizations create different personas to help managers develop strong sales and marketing strategies, create content and  plan for new products and services.

Just like most things in life, the rule of garbage-in-garbage-out also applies to creating buyer personas.  The more detail and effort that goes in to creating the personas the better the results will be when you use them.  Check out this article from MarketingProfs for helpful tips on creating buyer personas.